A team of researchers from Inserm, the University of Lille and the University Hospital of Lille within the Lille Neuroscience and Cognition laboratory, studied the role of the central nervous system in the development of diabetes. They realized thata hormone (which controls appetite) called leptin could directly cause type 2 diabetesas their study suggests.
Less satiety hormone, more risk of diabetes
It is the appetite suppressant hormone that was at the heart of this research, the one that allows the brain to tell the body: I have had enough to eat, let’s start the process of sugar assimilation. The latter is called leptin: it is “secreted by adipose tissue, in proportion to the fat reserves in the body, transported to the brain by cells called tanycytes, in which it enters by docking with receptors called LepR “, explains the study.
Researchers studied mice from which they had removed these LepR receptors (essential for informing the brain that the body has eaten enough, therefore) and found that in 3 months the mice had doubled in fat mass and lost half of their muscle mass. In these animals, to maintain normal blood sugar levels, the body first secreted a lot of insulin for 4 weeks. Then it ran out of stock and couldn’t distribute enough. Result: the mice developed a “pre-diabetic” state, write the researchers.
Reintroduce leptin to secrete insulin
When the body can no longer produce insulin, it can no longer manage its amount of glucose in the blood and this leads to type 2 diabetes.” In the animal deprived of the LepR receptor at the leptin gateway in the brain, glycemia is abnormally high on an empty stomach and a fortiori after ingestion of glucose”, underlines the study, which then speaks of “deafness” of the brain to satiety information.
By restoring leptin to the mice, the blood sugar returned to a normal dosage. This discovery points to the role of the brain in diabetes, which until now was not considered a disease of the central nervous system. It could also make it possible to orient treatments accordingly in the future.
Source : Diabetes: New advances in research thanks to the study of the satiety mechanism, August 2, 2021, Nature Metabolism, Inserm.
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